Research & Resources

benefits of diversity:

Summary: With the gap of economic inequality widening in San Antonio, the city’s educational opportunity gap is also exacerbated for its students. Beth Hawkins, Senior Writer for The 74 Million, reports on the efforts that the San Antonio Independent School District is taking under new superintendent, Pedro Martinez. Recognizing the negative impact that economic inequality has on education, the school district is restructuring its schools to fit a diverse-by-design model. Led by Mohammed Choudhury, the Chief Innovation Officer of the San Antonio Independent School District, this video highlights the work being done in San Antonio to take into account economic inequality when thinking about the diversity of its student population and the effect this has on educational outcomes and opportunities.

Summary: This essay speaks to the ever-present segregation still found in today’s public schools. This segregation is often driven by misconceptions that influence many well-intentioned white parents to remove their children from racially diverse schools. There are, however, many benefits that both white and non-white students can have in a racially diverse school setting. Integrated Schools is one organization that is bringing passionate parents together to make the conversation of school integration all the more urgent in today’s educational climate.

Summary: To date, the education policy and philanthropy communities have placed a premium on funding charter schools that have high concentrations of poverty and large numbers of minority students. While it makes sense that charter schools have focused on high-needs students, thus far this focus has resulted in prioritizing high-poverty charter schools over other models, which research suggests may not be the most effective way of serving at-risk students. There is a large body of evidence suggesting that socioeconomic and racial integration provide educational benefits for all students, especially at-risk students. Today, some innovative charter schools are pursuing efforts to integrate students from different racial and economic backgrounds in their classrooms.

Summary: This report argues that, as our K–12 student population becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, the time is right for our political leaders to pay more attention to the evidence, intuition, and common sense that supports the importance of racially and ethnically diverse educational settings to prepare the next generation. It highlights in particular the large body of research that demonstrates the important educational benefits—cognitive, social, and emotional—for all students who interact with classmates from different backgrounds, cultures, and orientations to the world. This research legitimizes the intuition of millions of Americans who recognize that, as the nation becomes more racially and ethnically complex, our schools should reflect that diversity and tap into the benefits of these more diverse schools to better educate all our students for the twenty-first century.

Summary: The paper presents an empirical analysis of inter-ethnic relations among adolescents in England’s schools, the first national study of schools throughout England to relate inter-ethnic attitudes to both school and area ethnic composition. We combine survey data on ‘warmth’ of feeling for specific ethnic groups, friendships and attitudes with administrative data on the shares of those groups at school and area level. We confirm that the pupils have warmer feelings for their own ethnic group than for others. Second, we show that in schools with more pupils from another ethnic group the gap between a pupil’s views of those from her own group and from another ethnic group is smaller. This is true for attitudes of the majority and of minority ethnic groups. Third, we show that school composition (interpreted as contact) mitigates area composition (interpreted as exposure).

When and How Do Students Benefit From Ethnic Diversity in Middle School?

Author: Jaana Juvonen, Kara Kogachi, and Sandra Graham

Summary: A study by University of California Los Angeles researchers published in the journal Child Development finds that students who attend more racially- and ethnically-diverse schools report less vulnerability, loneliness, insecurity and bullying.

Summary: The academic and social advantages white kids gain in integrated schools have been consistently documented by a rich body of peer-reviewed research over the last 15 years. And as strange as it may sound, many social scientists—and, increasingly, leaders in the business world—argue that diverse schools actually benefit white kids the most. Here’s a summary of some of the most convincing evidence these experts have used to date.

Summary: In thirteen essays, leading thinkers in the field of race and public education present not only the latest data and statistics on the trend toward resegregation but also legal and policy analysis of why these trends are accelerating, how they are harmful, and what can be done to counter them. What’s at stake is the quality of education available to both white and nonwhite students, they argue. This volume will help educators, policy makers, and concerned citizens begin a much-needed dialogue about how America can best educate its increasingly multiethnic student population in the twenty-first century.

Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive K-12 Schools: A New Call for Philanthropic Support

Author: Susan Eaton and Suchi Saxena

Summary: This report makes the case for philanthropic investment in racially, culturally and socioeconomically diverse K-12 public schools. We offer an overview of work in this field, its evolution, its growing popularity, supportive research base and hopeful contemporary examples. We provide a variety of paths for funders to support this work in ways that align with common philanthropic strategies and priorities. This report was informed by interviews with educators and other practitioners working towards diverse, equitable and inclusive schools and by numerous convenings and conferences, by research and by the authors’ experience in this field. We wish to thank our project collaborators and sponsors, The Ford Foundation and the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust.

Summary: The purpose of the study is to enhance knowledge in the field about the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion in education organizations. This study includes data from more than 200 organizations on organizational demographics, policies, and structures and nearly 5,000 individual perspectives on lived staff experiences in relation to diversity, equity, and inclusion with an intentional focus on race and ethnicity.

Summary: Studies show the percentage of people of color in the executive director/CEO role has remained under 20% for the last 15 years even as the country becomes more diverse. To understand the causes of this disparity, the Building Movement Project conducted the Nonprofits, Leadership, and Race survey with over 4,000 respondents. The study found few differences between white and people of color respondents in their aspirations or preparation for leadership roles. The findings point to a new narrative — that the nonprofit sector needs to address the practices and biases of those governing nonprofit organizations.

High Hopes and Harsh Realities: The Real Challenges to Building a Diverse Teacher Workforce

Author: Hannah Putman, Michael Hansen, Kate Walsh, and Diana Quintero

Summary: What will it take to achieve a national teacher workforce that is as diverse as the student body it serves, and how long will it take to reach that goal? This paper seeks to answer both of these essential questions. Authors examine four key moments along the teacher pipeline: college attendance and completion, majoring in education or pursuing another teacher preparation pathway, hiring into a teaching position, and staying in teaching year after year. They find that current and potential minority teachers disproportionately exit from the teaching pipeline at each of those four points.

Summary: It’s hard to imagine honest, revelatory, even enjoyable conversation between people on distant points of American life right now. But in this public conversation with Krista at the Citizen University annual conference, Matt Kibbe and Heather McGhee show us how. He’s a libertarian who helped activate the Tea Party. She’s a millennial progressive leader. They are bridge people for this moment — holding passion and conviction together with an enthusiasm for engaging difference, and carrying questions as vigorously as they carry answers.

Equity and Excellence for All: Diversity in New York City Public Schools

Author: New York City Department of Education

Summary: This diversity plan defines diversity as a priority for the DOE and part of our Equity and Excellence for All agenda, lays out a vision for working together with schools and communities towards meaningful and sustainable progress, and includes several policy changes that we can and must make now.

case studies & toolkits:

Neighborhoods Primed for Charter School Growth: Four Communities in the Bronx and Queens Are in Need of High Quality School Options

Author: New York City Charter School Center

Summary: Even as the New York City Department of Education has committed resources toward turning around failing schools, sharing best practices to improve achievement across all schools, and testing innovative approaches – Renewal, Showcase, and PROSE schools, respectively – the fact of the matter is that this long-term approach is unproven and, at best, takes time. Given the critical needs of many NYC students, particularly those in underserved communities, the Charter Center analyzed district school performance, charter demand, and Census data that identified four neighborhoods in the Bronx and Queens that would particularly benefit from the immediate growth of high quality charter schools.

Preparing Teachers to Support Social and Emotional Learning: A Case Study of San Jose State University and Lakewood Elementary School

Author: Hanna Melnick and Lorea Martinez

Summary: This two-part study provides a picture of what SEL looks like when integrated into the school day. The first part describes how one preservice program prepares teachers for the social and emotional dimensions of teaching and learning in San Jose State University (SJSU)’s elementary teacher preparation program. The second part provides a glimpse into the SEL professional development at Lakewood Elementary School in Sunnyvale, CA. This report intends to inform policymakers, practitioners, and teacher educators about the components of strong, SEL-focused teacher preparation and development programs.

Summary: For a small cost, states can save public charter schools billions of dollars and enable these schools to build long-term roots in their communities. A new policy brief by ExcelinEd, Addressing Charter School Facility Needs: Actions for States, identifies actions state policymakers can take to accomplish this.

Scoring States on Charter School Integration - State Charter Policy Report

Author: The Century Foundation

Summary: This report, co-authored by DCSC board member, Halley Potter and Miriam Nunberg of The Century Foundation, argues that if charter schools are to become more integrated, states need to offer the right supports and guardrails in charter school policies to make this happen. The report finds that, across the board, more could be done at a state level in both policies and in practice to support integration in charter schools. An interactive map is also accompanied with the study in order to see in-depth profiles and analyses for each state, including key findings, additional details on the state’s charter school policies and enrollment data, and specific recommendations for state policymakers and charter school authorizers.

Summary: The Century Foundation has published three new reports outlining a range of strategies and best practices to increase racial and socioeconomic diversity in K-12 public schools. The reports are designed as toolkits for school leaders across the country, and aim to give educators the tools and resources they need to realize the many benefits of school diversity in their classrooms. As an additional resource, TCF has established an email address for school leaders who want to learn more about integrating their own schools and/or connect with schools featured in the toolkits: integratingclasrooms@tcf.org. Each toolkit combines concrete policy recommendations with specific examples of schools that have pursued integration with success. They are written to provide tools for a wide range of schools—with different sizes, location, or student demographics—and focus on three different yet equally important areas of diversity efforts:

Summary: English learners (ELs) are a growing part of the K–12 student population. Between the 2009–10 and 2014–15 school years, the percentage of EL students increased in more than half of the states, with increases of over 40 percent in five states. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states must annually assess the English language proficiency of ELs, provide reasonable accommodations for them on state assessments, and develop new accountability systems that include long-term goals and measures of progress for ELs. While Spanish was the most common language spoken by ELs at home in 2014–15, in some states there was more variation in the home language. The need to support less commonly spoken languages could also be different across school districts. The U.S. Department of Education has created a story map giving information on the characteristics and location of ELs in the U.S. to help inform decisions about the provision of instructional supports and services for these students.

Summary: Set the Schools Free has developed a tool that allows demographic data on student diversity to be sorted at the school level for Kansas City’s charter schools as well as the Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) district. All data for the tool was taken from publicly available data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. This tool allows all schools to be looked at together, and also to be compared to one another. As conversations about race, equity, and diversity across school districts increase, leaders, teachers, and parents can only benefit from more access to accurate school-level information.

Summary: This annual survey—developed and reported by EdChoice and interviews conducted by their partner, Braun Research, Inc.—measures public opinion and awareness on a range of K–12 education topics, including parents’ schooling preferences, educational choice policies, the federal government’s role in education and more. The report records response levels, differences (“margins”) and intensities for the country and a range of demographic groups. And this year, the survey includes an additional sample of current public school teachers to gauge whom they trust and how they feel about their profession, accountability, standardized testing and more.

Who Is Here to Help Me? The Work-Related Social Networks of Staff of Color in Two Mid-Sized Districts

Authors: Travis J. Bristol, Matthew Shirrell

Summary: Despite the benefits of educators of color to various outcomes for students of color, large-scale research has not explored these educators’ on-the-job interactions with colleagues outside of large urban districts. Using social network analysis, this study examined the work-related social interactions of staff (teachers and administrators) of color in two mid-sized school districts. Where staff of color were likely the only faculty members of color—and where math professional development and curricular change were district-wide foci—staff of color were less likely to seek out colleagues for math advice. Staff of color were generally not sought for advice any more or less than White colleagues. Implications for policy and practice related to staff of color are discussed.

Summary: This report represents the first systematic effort to identify diverse-by-design charter schools and characterize the role of student diversity in school mission and design across the charter sector more generally. Based on an analysis using three different factors—racial and socioeconomic demographics of schools, school leader responses on a survey, and analysis of charter schools’ websites—this report identifies 125 intentionally diverse charter schools. Although they represent a small slice of the charter school sector, data suggests that the number of diverse-by-design charter schools is growing. These schools offer important insights into how the charter school model can help promote school integration.

Citizens of the World Charter Schools: Balancing Network and Community

Authors: Halle Potter

Summary: When CWC Kansas City opened in fall 2016, several characteristics set it apart. For one thing, it was one of relatively few elementary schools left in Midtown; in recent years, Kansas City Public Schools, in response to declining enrollment, had closed and consolidated a number of schools. For another, the school offered a progressive learning model, including project-based learning, a focus on social-emotional development, and a robust arts program. But perhaps most surprising within the local context was the school’s demographics.

Denver School of Science and Technology: Students of All Backgrounds Preparing for One Bright Future

Authors: Kimberly Quick

Summary: DSST, which serves an intentionally diverse yet generally low-income student population, prides itself on more than just its performance on state assessments. Its teachers and leaders emphasize that the network’s six core values—respect, responsibility, integrity, courage, curiosity, and doing your best—impact the choices of students and staff alike. From every high school in the network committing to scheduling and completing home visits for each incoming child, to students establishing peer-tutoring to help one another, DSST’s balancing of challenging academics and caring philosophy is worth the attention of researchers and educators.

Summary: Blackstone Valley Prep, a K–12 charter school network, admits students from across four racially and socioeconomically diverse communities in the northeast corner of Rhode Island. The network integrates students within classrooms, regardless of performance level. Its culturally responsive curriculum aims to reflect and incorporate the range of experiences and backgrounds of its students. The network prides itself on being among the state’s highest performers when it comes to standardized test scores, and its low-income students outperform their peers from the four Blackstone Valley communities.

Summary: In a city where the educational landscape is dominated by other charter schools, Morris Jeff Community School stands out for its International Baccalaureate curriculum, dedication to ability inclusion and diversity, commitment to teacher voice, and academic consistency. The school articulated these principles at its founding, committing to being an institution that not only serves the surrounding community, but also involves and reflects it. At Morris Jeff, this looks like a student body that reflects the racial and economic demographics of New Orleans, and a teachers collective bargaining contract that recognizes that the voices of teachers, parents, and administrators are all necessary to maximize success.

Valor Collegiate Academies: Charter Schools Intentionally Designed to Serve Diverse Students and Families

Author: Safal Partners

Summary: This case study features Valor Collegiate Academies, an intentionally diverse charter management organization (CMO) that operates two high-performing charter schools in Nashville, Tennessee. Valor opened its first school in 2014-15 with a mission to serve a diverse student body and has made many decisions through its founding and operation to achieve that mission. Valor Flagship Academy, the first Valor school, produced outstanding academic results, including the highest standardized test scores in the city, in its first year of operation. This case study presents voices of many participants in Valor’s work.

How Personalized Learning Models Can Meet the Needs of Students with Disabilities: Thrive Public Schools Case Study

Author: Lauren Morando Rhim and Stephanie Lancet

Summary: CRPE contracted with the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools (NCSECS) to conduct case studies on school models and practices that effectively serve students with special needs. This brief highlights how a San Diego charter school network is using personalized learning to meet the needs of its students with disabilities.

Denver School of Science and Technology's Cole High School: Center of Excellence, Shining a Spotlight on Promising Practices for Students with Disabilities in the Charter Sector

Author: National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools

Summary: The National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools identified four charter schools from across the country as “Centers of Excellence” to showcase and share examples of charter schools that leverage their autonomy particularly well to benefit students with disabilities. Each Center of Excellence enrolls a proportionate or higher number of students with disabilities relative to the district where the school is located, demonstrates an explicit commitment to developing exemplary programs with a focus on inclusion, and achieves higher-than-average outcomes for students with disabilities. Each Center of Excellence profile is designed to share the story of an outstanding school that provides particular insight into how charter schools – and all public schools – can provide exemplary services to students with disabilities.

Stamford Public Schools: From Desegregated Schools to Integrated Classrooms

Author: Halley Potter

Summary: In contrast with many northeastern cities, Stamford has shown remarkable success maintaining racially and socioeconomically desegregated schools thanks to strong district policies and state laws that date back to the 1960s and 1970s. Over the past decade, the district has also committed to integrating classrooms through de-tracking and successfully reduced achievement gaps while increasing overall test scores. This report looks at the history of school integration efforts in Stamford, the district’s robust policy to desegregate schools, and the impact these efforts have had on integration and student outcomes

Summary: Champaign has implemented a successful plan to desegregate schools, first instituted in response to litigation and now continued voluntarily. However, persistent struggles to address disparities in academic offerings, school discipline, and perceptions of school climate for students of color have resulted in large academic achievement gaps across both race and socioeconomic status. Perhaps the lesson of Champaign’s progress and continued challenges is that desegregating schools is only the beginning of work on equity. In order to improve student outcomes across the district, Champaign must address the opportunity gap that currently prevents all students in the district from having access to the educational resources they need.

A New Wave of School Integration: Districts and Charters Pursuing Socioeconomic Diversity

Author: Halley Potter, Kimberly Quick And Elizabeth Davies

Summary: In this report, TCF highlights the work that school districts and charter schools across the country are doing to promote socioeconomic and racial integration by considering socioeconomic factors in student assignment policies. The efforts of the districts and charters we identified provide hope in the continuing push for integration, demonstrating a variety of pathways for policymakers, education leaders, and community members to advance equity.

Remedying School Segregation: How New Jersey’s Morris School District Chose to Make Diversity Work

Author: Paul Tractenberg, Allison Roda And Ryan Coughlan

Summary: The Morris School District has been a remarkable, if incomplete, success story. It has achieved and maintained diversity at the school district and school building levels, but, in common with other diverse districts around the country, it is still confronting the challenge of extending that diversity to the classroom, course, and program level.

Intentionally Diverse Charter Schools: A Toolkit for Charter School Leaders

Author: Nora Kern

Summary: This toolkit is designed to help charter school leaders and their stakeholders design and implement intentionally diverse charter schools. It presents decisions and actions, along with specific examples from three diverse charter schools, for school leaders’ consideration. Using this toolkit, leaders will learn more about how to measure student diversity, how to intentionally recruit and retain students, how to ensure that diversity is supported and experienced meaningfully at the individual, classroom, and schoolwide levels, and how to create and run schools that help all children thrive.

EDUCATION EQUALITY INDEX: Measuring the Performance of Students from Low-Income Families in Schools and Cities Across the Country

Author: Luke Dauter and Samantha Olivieri

Summary: The Education Equality Index (EEI), created through a collaboration of GreatSchools and Education Cities, is the first nationally comparative measure of academic performance of students from low-income families in schools and cities. The EEI enables researchers, advocates, and educators to: Highlight schools and cities across the country with the highest performance by low-income students; Track how cities and schools progress over time in performance by low-income students, relative to low-income students across the country and; Identify cities and schools for further investigation based how students from low-income families are performing.

segregation in America:

Do Charter Schools Increase Segregation?

Authors: Tomas Monarrez, Brian Kisida and Matthew M. Chingos

Summary: A recent study uses detailed annual records on school enrollment by race spanning a period of 17 years, from 1998 to 2015, and a research design that isolates the causal effect of the charter share of enrollment on the segregation of American school systems. While it is found that, on average, an increase in the percentage of students going to charter schools leads to a small increase in the segregation of black and Hispanic students within the school districts in which charters open, there is considerable variation in the size of this effect, particularly depending on how a school system is defined.

Summary: Using data from Tomas Monarrez, a UC Berkeley economics PhD candidate, Vox has published an article that explores the exacerbation of school segregation by the creation of school attendance zones. The article also comes with an interactive map that shows school segregation by school district for all 50 states.

Summary: An alarming pattern of racial segregation has re-emerged in the Boston Public School system over the last two decades, according to a Globe analysis, largely the consequence of steps taken by city and school officials to allow more students to attend schools in their neighborhoods as they did prior to court-ordered busing. Nearly 60 percent of the city’s schools meet the definition of being intensely segregated — meaning students of color occupy at least 90 percent of the seats.

Author: The Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) in partnership with
the Urban Institute

Summary: The Metropolitan Planning Council, together with Urban Institute and a team of regional policy advisors, analyzed segregation patterns in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the country. We examined three types of segregation: economic segregation, African American-white segregation and Latino-white segregation. We then examined what impacts we would see if the Chicago region reduced its levels of segregation to the median levels of segregation of the nation’s 100 biggest metros. The core of this report is a summary of our findings. The findings for African American-white segregation were the most pronounced in our study, yet they are not the only indicator of how segregation is experienced by race in this region. We share additional data about the impact of segregation on Latinos at other points in this report.

Summary: In 1933, faced with a housing shortage, the federal government began a program explicitly designed to increase — and segregate — America’s housing stock. Author Richard Rothstein says the housing programs begun under the New Deal were tantamount to a “state-sponsored system of segregation.”

The government’s efforts were “primarily designed to provide housing to white, middle-class, lower-middle-class families,” he says. African-Americans and other people of color were left out of the new suburban communities — and pushed instead into urban housing projects.

Summary: Right now, all sorts of people are trying to rethink and reinvent education, to get poor minority kids performing as well as white kids. But there’s one thing nobody tries anymore, despite lots of evidence that it works: desegregation. In part one, Nikole Hannah-Jones looks at a district that, not long ago, accidentally launched a desegregation program. In part two, a city going all out to integrate its schools. Plus, a girl who comes up with her own one-woman integration plan.

How The Systemic Segregation Of Schools Is Maintained By 'Individual Choices'

Author: Fresh Air (NPR)

Summary: Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that when it comes to school segregation, separate is never truly equal.”There’s never been a moment in the history of this country where black people who have been isolated from white people have gotten the same resources,” Hannah-Jones says…Still, when it was time for Hannah-Jones’ daughter, Najya, to attend kindergarten, the journalist chose the public school near their home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, even though its students were almost all poor and black or Latino. Hannah-Jones later wrote about that decision in The New York Times Magazine.

What White Parents Can Do to Help Desegregate Schools. And how to avoid acting like saviors in the process

Author: Patrick Wall

Summary: In 2014, Mykytyn founded Integrated Schools, a grassroots organization that encourages white families to “deliberately and joyfully” take the first step toward making their local schools more racially and socioeconomically diverse. While organizations such as the Century Foundation and the National Coalition on School Diversity promote integration on the national level, Mykytyn’s group is focused on recruiting middle-class white parents—the very people who have historically resisted sending their kids to integrated schools. “We’re the ones who kind of made it all fail,” says Mykytyn, who has a doctorate in anthropology. “Really fixing it has to be on us.”

Summary: This report by Civil Rights Project at UCLA and the Center for Education and Civil Rights at Penn State finds intense segregation of Black and Latino students in the South with charter schools more segregated for Black and Latino Students. Segregation in the South is double segregation for blacks and Latinos, meaning that they are in schools segregated both by race and by poverty in a region where the share of students poor enough to receive free or subsidized lunches has soared to nearly 60% of all students. Both segregation by race and poverty, research shows, are systematically linked to weaker opportunities and student outcomes.

Summary: In this episode, Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider discuss how test scores and other current metrics distort our picture of school quality, often fostering segregation in the process. What would a better set of measures include? Our intrepid hosts venture inside an urban elementary school to find out.

Summary: While the integration of schools was a major milestone for civil rights, it unexpectedly lead to the firing of Black teachers around the country due to protests from White parents who did not want their children being taught by Black teachers. This forgotten period lead to our country’s current state where the percentage of Black teachers is less than that of Black students. This episode examines this forgotten impact of the Brown vs. Board decision.

other:

Courageous Conversations About Race

Summary: Founded by Glenn E. Singleton in 1992, Pacific Educational Group is committed to achieving racial equity in education. We engage in sustained partnerships with educational organizations to transform beliefs, behaviors, and results so people of all races can achieve at their highest levels and live their most empowered and powerful lives.

Summary: Color blindness is often seen as the ultimate form of equality and non-bias; however in this podcast Michele Norris of The Aspen Institute and Jeff Raikes, former Gates Foundation CEO, discuss the true consequences of colorblindness and how it hurts progress. They also share examples of how they are trying to to shift this prevailing attitude of color blindness by turning directly toward race and equity.

Summary: Pulitzer Prize-winning Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz is interviewed in this episode. He discusses the importance of “radical hope” in the aftermath of the 2016 election and as a tool towards equality.

Summary: In this episode Vincent Harding, a great civil rights elder, examines how aspects of the civil rights vision may be applied to today’s realities. He also investigates the answer to an important question that many have posed: Is America possible?